Date of Birth: 02/13/1943
Neighborhood: Overbrook
High School: St. Joseph's Preparatory School
Street:
Branch of Service: Navy
Rank: CDR
Date of Casualty: 08/25/1972
Province of Casualty:
Philadelphia Memorial Panel: Panel 8
Panel Row: 14
Click on the memorial panel below for a printable photo of the serviceman on this page.
The Navy F-4B Phantom jet fighter pilot was an honors graduate of St. Joseph's Preparatory School and a top Naval ROTC student at Holy Cross College near Boston, where he edited the school newspaper. He reported to the Navy a week after graduation, and was assigned to duty off of Vietnam after completing flight training. The 29-year-old commander was shot down on Aug. 25, 1972, by a Soviet-made SAM missile 12 miles southwest of Haiphong, North Vietnam. He was on his third tour of duty and his 250th corn-bat mission of the war. What happened to him next remained a mystery for 13 years and was a constant source of anguish and uncertainty for his family, which had moved from Over-brook Farms to Newburyport, Mass. Although it was believed he was killed by the missile, Doyle was first reported missing and later as having been cap-tuned by the North Vietnamese and incarcerated at the "Hanoi Hilton" prison camp. The Navy declared him “presumed killed in action” in 1980, In August 1985, his body was one of 26 turned over by the North Vietnamese to the U.S. government. A positive identification was made by military pathologists in Hawaii in October 1985, and he was officially declared dead. Among his survivors were his parents and two brothers, one of whom is a Navy jet fighter pilot who was the military escort officer accompanying Michael Doyle's remains home from Hawaii.